Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 127 | Special Law Enforcement Talk With Tarrant County Texas Sheriff | Guest: Bill E. Waybourn

Episode Date: June 15, 2019

Looks like Jeffy was able to sit down with Sheriff Bill E. Waybourn and they discuss human trafficking, illegals in Texas and police recruitment.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Chewing the Fat. Sheriff Bill E. Weyburn, Terrant County, Texas, Sheriff Bill Waverin. Welcome to the broadcast. How are you, sir? I'm doing great. And thank you for having me. It's a blessing and an honor to be here, sir. Absolutely. Happy to do it. Now, we have been talking pre-recording about a number of things. So we'll just jump right in. First, we do a lot of work here at the Blaze and Mercury with our Rescue Foundation that helps. drug trafficking, sex trafficking, slavery trafficking around the world and here in the United States. And you talked to me about a stat that I didn't know here with the foster care kids. Tell us what that stat was. This is a University of Texas at Austin study that was commissioned by the Governor Abbott's office, actually.

And they wanted to find out what was going on in human trafficking. And what they found out was that they felt. I felt like there was close to 300,000 people engaged in human trafficking in Texas. And then probably out of that, I think there was 80,000 children, and 89% of that number came out of our foster care program one way or the other. Still a pretty big number. Huge number. When you start breaking it down. So if that's the case, and the numbers are obviously bearing that out, who's responsible?

I mean, are people just saying, hey, these are foster care kids and they're more vulnerable so I can delve into them and use them? Or is it the foster care parents? I mean, we find, we hear horror stories all the time. And obviously, I'm not, there's, you know, there's always a disclaimer of there's plenty of wonderful foster care parents out there. I get it. There are some great foster care parents and we need more great foster. care parents in Texas. I think it's a combination of several things, and I think one of them is, is that these

kids end up in perpetual foster care. You know, they get passed on from one foster family to another, so they get kind of lost in the crowd a little bit. They're kind of our forgotten children in a lot of ways, and when they do become eligible for adoption, generally they're older children, and nobody wants to adopt a 12-year-old or 13-year-old. By the way, we've got 400 ready for adoption in Tarrant County alone that could be adopted today if people would step up and do that.

But these kids are out there. They're extremely vulnerable. And a lot of times they run away. And so you've got a 14-year-old girl that runs away from a home. They file the runaway report. They got other children to take forward. And it's not like that typical parent out there beating the, you know, beating the bushes to find out where they're at.

They file a report. And that's all they can do. And then that child within 24 hours often, statistically, they're going to end up in trafficking. Wow. So we have here in Tarrant County, Texas, how prevalent is the trafficking and the slavery? I mean, I want to say, that's nothing. Nothing. Well, unfortunately, we're pretty busy. We stood up a human trafficking unit in the first six months I was in office, and those guys have been now working for two years, and they've worked with all of our. partners, both our nonprofits and other law enforcement entities. And right now, we are edging up

where we've arrested about 200 people that one way or another, we're either predators or traffickers are promoting prostitution or those kind of things. They were attached to the human trafficking in the sex slave condition. And in the greater Tarrant County with our partners, we've rescued close to 100 people out of human trafficking. That's great, but it is. And it seems like a drop in the bucket sometimes because we go back and we run more operations and there's always more. Yeah, it's never ending. It certainly feels that way. It is never ending. And I'm told, and I believe the staff that the human trafficking trade is surpassing the narcotic trade and profit. So what about what do I look for? And I'll get off the human trafficking in a little bit.

But if I'm, you know, I was reading a story about a family who had presumably brought in one or two children that were slaves, really, for them. And then I'm told that some of the other human trafficking that are used for prostitution are, you know, they're staying at an apartment. And one of the things I have to look for. I mean, what is what am I looking for? Because if I see a man and two kids walking on the street, that doesn't mean anything to me. That's great. It's some of the most difficult things to tell people is what to look for. But one of the things with kids that you look for is that natural bonding issue that's not happening between,

oh, that looks like that could be a parent and a child. But wait a minute, that child is not very receptive to that parent. And maybe there's something else there. And it's suspect like that. And I mean, you have to watch it for a while because often once they get these kids in their loops, they have narcotics in them. They're drugged so they're not making a lot of sense. And so they're not and they're fearful of denying who this person is. It is really, really tough.

But it is that suspect thing where your gut goes, wait a minute, that ain't right. And that's the one we need to go see. We need to look into that. So if I say that ain't right to someone and I call your office and I say, you know, I saw this people living in my neighborhood and it just doesn't feel right. What happens then? Because now I think you're going to tell me something that I'm going to be mad at. Well, no, actually what we're going to do is we're going to start checking it out. We will run that down and we'll check out who lives there, why they live there, what do they do.

And, you know, we may do a variety of different things up into covert operations and other. undercover and surveillance. All of the standard police responses will be there. I mean, I get that. I just, I have a, I had a feeling that you were going to, you know, just kind of go up and, you know, almost say, hey, we've got a report on you and we're looking into you. Yeah, no, we take it very serious, and we try to make sure we know who we're talking to and we make sure. And who did the report? Absolutely. Right. I mean, I'm not going to report someone because then you're going to look into me. Well, is that what we do is if you make that report and then we're going to try to validate it as can it be corroborated by other sources and that other source may be what's going on in the neighborhood or if we run that or maybe we've already, chances are somebody else is called and said, you know, there's five people living there and it seems like there's four young women and a man or something to that effect.

And by the way, you know, on the immigration issue is that we know that. there are stash houses in Tarrant County and Dallas County that the cartel are using. And we've discovered some of those. And we know those are taking place. And the people, if you watch your neighborhood, it's going to be things that are out of place that don't make sense that they're here. And if you live in a neighborhood that doesn't have anyone out of place, you certainly know what it is when something is out of place.

That's exactly right. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the order of policing. in Texas and Tarrant County. You know, so I was thinking about this the other day. So here in Tarran,

we have constables, right? And I'm not sure 100% what they do. We have the local law enforcement for cities, municipalities. And then we have you, Sheriff's Department, right?

And then we have the Texas Rangers. Now that's, and I'm not believing the feds and everything that involved around the federal law enforcement. But here in Texas, those are the four that I can think of

off the top of my head. So where do you rank in there? Well, some would refer to the sheriff as chief law enforcement officer of the county constitutionally. And some of that can be said that that's where we're at. But those people don't report to me. You know, the constables are elected offices. And if you think of this in terms of constables are full peace officers. They can enforce to do anything I can do.

But mostly in Tarrant County, what they do in other counties is what they do is they serve civil papers. They are civil deputies. They, you know, notify you if you're getting sued and all that kind of thing for the courts. And generally, they are housed with Justice of the Pieces. They help help that court out. Right. And then the local municipal officers are the ones that are ground pounders that are out in your neighborhoods, making sure you're safe and that thin blue line there.

And the sheriff's department, the biggest, you know, 60% of my job is the jail, you know, where I run the county jail where if it's class B or better, they come to me and then we do other traditional we've got all the unincorporated area that we patrol we investigate and we have other narcotic. How much is left unincorporated in Tarrant County now? Pretty close to 150 square miles. Wow. So that's still pretty good. Right. Probably 60, 70,000 people live out there. So how many, I saw four years. I mean, I just, I lived for years in Florida and I saw a couple of sheriff's departments start to really promote getting rid of the local municipalities and expanding the sheriff and duties and getting a little bit more money for the sheriff and duties

as they tell the cities, ah, you can't afford to have that police department. I can take care of it for you. Yeah. How much are you doing that? Well, we're not advocating that at all. We are open to regionalization. We're open to partnering with municipalities at whatever level that we can. But if they want our services, that's a whole different game that we've got to sit down and work that out.

But that would be up to those citizens of that community of what they want and what level of law enforcement that they want, of course. And we don't advocate for that. We do contract with two communities, but they've never had a police agency. We've always been their law enforcement. All right, so the jail. You cover them. So if you're in charge of the jail for, I mean, that's for everyone in Tarrant County. Right. I mean, if you go to jail, I go to you. You're going to probably end up with me. If it's a Class B or hire, if it's a Class C, like a traffic ticket, no. But if it's Class B, DWI, Criminal Mischief. Speaking of a traffic ticket, I mean, if you take care of one, then I think. So what's the biggest thing on Sheriff Bill Weyburn's list? of things to get done. Right now. Yeah, what we're doing is, is that we have what we call the 287G program in Tarrant County. And what that is, is I started it two years ago, and it allows our officers, our deputies in the jail to be certified as federal officers for ICE. And so we can do

24-hour identification of people who have broken the law, got into jail, and we can check their immigration status and put a ice detainer on them. And that's coming up for renewal. That's great. Yeah. And what we've found is that, you know, we've got 4,300 people in jail this morning. 8% are going to be illegal aliens charged with criminal offenses. And out of that group of illegal aliens, 80% of those people are repeat offenders. They've slipped through the cracks. They've committed other laws and sometimes in Tarrant County before 287G. And what's the percentage and you may know this number. What's the percentage of those reoccurring offenders?

How many times have they been in and out of the country? Do you have any idea? Well, we just recently looked at that, and that was really very few. But we have numerous ones who have committed offenses around the state and including Terrant, Dallas County, where they were never detected as illegal aliens, so they weren't deported.

Well, they didn't have 287G. They didn't have 287G. And they weren't deported or anything like that. And they came through the jail and went back out in the community. Right. And now we're arresting for things like aggravated sexual assault of a child, you know. Of course, because the crimes are getting worse and worse. They've gotten away with the smaller ones.

Why not step up? Yes, sir. So when you detect them, then what? Right. Well, we were able to put a detainer on them, which turns into basically an ice warrant. And then they're just held. That's just a note on our booking stuff. And we go through whatever they're doing in the state.

I mean, if it was Class A misdrameter and it takes them 60 day to get to trial, you know, like at 9 o'clock this morning, the judge says, hey, listen, I'm going to give you time served on your state offenses, and we're done with you. Then they come back to the jail. We notify eyes. And by the end of the day, ICE has custody of them. That's a fast turnaround.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's within 12 hours. It's within 12 hours that are out of our jail and gone. Sheriff Bill E. Weyburn, sheriff of Tarrant County, Texas. I appreciate you stopping by today. So immigration is solved in Tarrant County. You've solved it.

Isn't that what I just heard? Well, we're working. We're doing our part. We're trying to do the best we can with what we got. And so how long is you, you're an elected official. Yes, sir. So when you're running again, when do I have to vote for you again? again. Well, thank you.

I will be on the ballot next year in 2020. And so we won't know until December if we have a primary opponent or if we have a Democratic opponent. So how are your, how are, how is your department as far as deputy sheriffs? You know, we've heard such nightmare stories about some of the other municipalities in the Fort Worth Metroplex. You know, Dallas. comes to mind that are so short of police officers that, I mean, and in short, because, you know,

two-fold. You know, nobody wants to work there and the pay scale is not up to par, according to the stories that we hear. How many of those officers are you stealing? What do you take it? Well, we have a few Dallas officers, and we will be happy to take a few more, and we do have openings. We, fortunately, of all the urban counties, we have the lowest jailer turnover. that's where our biggest hole is is jailers.

And we have low turnover, but we have openings right now if anybody's interested in and entering law enforcement. We'd love to have you. And what we're seeing is in law enforcement is because of the divisiveness in the country from the last administration, it really has struggled to get people who would normally say, yeah, I'd love to go in law enforcement. They're saying, you know what, I've taken a second look. I think I'm going to do something else.

Right. So we are running into that. Yes. And no question. And we want that person that's willing to come and serve and that kind of thing. And as far as what we're seeing is, is we've had this gel explosion where our population has gone to an average from 3,800 up to 43 or 4,400. And we're staffed for 3,700. So we're struggling trying to figure out this is going to cost money. Right. It just costs money to increase that staff. But we've got to figure out how to do that. We're statutorily must do it. And so, I mean, you have to get the money then, right? I mean, we've got to get people. You can't expect people to work back to back hours. And, you know, overtime is fun for just a little while.

You aren't kidding. So recruiting, other than, you know, seeing, you know, that Dallas police officer on the side of the road writing a ticket. And you stop by and say, hey, you don't want to write tickets for Dallas anymore. Come work for me. What's, what's, how do you recruit? Well, they can go to our website at Tarrant County. Sheriffs.com, but they can also contact Terran County Human Resources Office, and they have a portal there that they can apply. And I understand that, but I mean, do you, do you travel the

country and talk to the military? Yes, we do. We have a recruiter that goes to the military bases. We have a recruiter that's out at colleges and high schools and everywhere that we go out to those places and say, look at the opportunity you could have at Tarrant County. So how did, we've heard stories about, and we're talking to Sheriff Bill Waverin of Tarrant County, Texas, and I know you're busy, but as I'm talking to you, I keep coming up with more little thoughts.

We've heard great concern and talk about how difficult it is to find good employees in the oil projects here in Texas, down in Midland and people working because they can't find people who are a

show up on time and drug-free. And so, I mean, that's got to be a difficult task for you as well. It is a mountain of a task, you know, that people come in and they apply and says, listen, I quit doing cocaine two months ago in order to, because I wanted to come to law enforcement, you know, we've had those issues, but it's a tremendous issue. How one of those have to be? Does it have to be three months? Well, you know, we prefer several years. But what we're seeing is, and it's, it's been this way for a long time in law enforcement. You have 100 people apply, six of them are going to

get in. Wow. So, you know, 4 to 6% is going to get in because they're not going to pass the background for one reason or another. They're going to get filtered out pretty quickly. That's incredible. Sheriff, thank you so much for coming by. I really appreciate it. And I enjoyed the chat, and I hope to do it again soon. And if you've got one of those, you know, I don't know, get out of jail free cards or something that you want to just have to leave on the counter for me. Well, there would be great. We'll do that. Thank you. Thank you. the